I just got a heads-up from Cameron McMaster on this blogpost over at CBC’s public affairs blog, regarding the furore a few weeks back over their use of the company iCopyright to try and make money off of people who want to quote full articles or post them at their site in full.

I’ve seen reassurances from CBC before that nothing has really changed in their policy, but what annoys me to no end (which I didn’t catch before in any of their communications) is that they want folks to write into them to get permission to quote excerpts before they use them at their own blogposts/websites etc. As Cameron writes in response to that post, that request by CBC for people to “ask permission to use (CBC) content when they excerpt, quote, or repost when its for a non-commercial purpose… is not needed according to Canadian copyright law“. He would be referring to the Supreme Court ruling on Fair Dealing, if you’re wondering on what basis he makes that assertion.

In light of that, I’d love to see CBC try to enforce that “you need to ask permission” request.. but I believe it’s a bluff on their part. I don’t know if it’s an attempt to shield themselves from criticism, as Cameron asserts (he and I arent exactly on the same political wavelength; we just agree on this issue that CBC is being silly), or if it’s just an attempt to make an extra buck or 2, or both, but I’m not going to bother sending CBC traffic (at least to their news stories/sites) if that’s the policy their management policy want to continue to insist on using.

At most, they might get a link, but I’m more inclined to send traffic to news organizations who are complying with and understand the concept of “fair dealing”.